The OPC mode is there because you forced to be online 24/7 then your character in OPC mode should be doing something. However, I may be wrong here, but you don't have to do much. You can park your character at home and have them only eat and drink when needed. Same could be done in a temporarily tent in the woods with your friends. While you can do much more, it is not required. Unless you scripted the OPC then they will more than likely not do much in OPC mode, just stand around and eat and drink for survival. It will all come down to how you can script, if are good at it, then you can do a lot more, if not then you will be limited to the basics.

It's a heck of a lot better than ARK's design. Would you like to fall flat on your face when you log out? So people can find you and drag you off or just straight kill you.

No thank you. OPC is way better than you think. You can't achieve immersion when people suddenly vanish. I don't understand one bit how immersion is ruined for you. If you are offline, you are just eating, sleeping, fishing, whatever you tell it to do. If you don't want it to do a story without you... have it freaking fish all day. What is your point here?

If you log out with a friend and you want to "move on" then your friend would be stuck there even if you vanished offline... what is the problem? Are you worried about your offline friend character being by himself? You MAY be a little safer with the two of you randomly in the woods, but I doubt it.

How would you handle your mercenary gig if they were offline and had disappeared instead of OPC? You'd end up in the same situation. They are offline!!!

I understand that you can script it and likely use many variables. But the complication to me is when something unexpected happens to your OPC. If you are a paramount factor in the lives of many people and some new problem arises your character won't be able to respond to it in OPC mode.

Imagine the innkeeper is a player. Then something happens and a fire spreads through a few buildings in that part of town and it destroys the inn. The innkeeper would just be sitting there in his room or doing his "greet customers/serve food" script or whatever while the building burns down around him and he dies.

Or let's say in that same scenario the captain of the guard is a player and the fire breaks out while he/she is offline and in OPC mode. They would probably have scripts set up to respond to attacks, arresting someone that a guard brings in, giving orders if the city is attacked and such. But something new happening the captain wouldn't have a proper response and it would be like asking an npc guard to come help you in any other MMO. They wouldn't. It'll suspend immersion and possibly ruin storylines. At least that's my fear.

Posted By Ironside at 3:47 PM - Wed Jun 21 2017

It's a heck of a lot better than ARK's design. Would you like to fall flat on your face when you log out? So people can find you and drag you off or just straight kill you.

No thank you. OPC is way better than you think. You can't achieve immersion when people suddenly vanish. I don't understand one bit how immersion is ruined for you. If you are offline, you are just eating, sleeping, fishing, whatever you tell it to do. If you don't want it to do a story without you... have it freaking fish all day. What is your point here?

If you log out with a friend and you want to "move on" then your friend would be stuck there even if you vanished offline... what is the problem? Are you worried about your offline friend character being by himself? You MAY be a little safer with the two of you randomly in the woods, but I doubt it.

How would you handle your mercenary gig if they were offline and had disappeared instead of OPC? You'd end up in the same situation. They are offline!!!

I agree that simply disappearing doesn't make it any better, and it likely worse. I'm just pointing out that the plans some people have such as mercenary companies could be more difficult than they first think.

Your "just fish all day" solution doesn't really work if the person is an integral part of the community. During an emergency, they'd just be sitting there "nope, sorry. I'm fishing today".

Your concerns then will need to be held off until the OPC details are revealed. No one has specifics. Not even the devs are this point imho. White board? yes. Final product, not even close.

I can understand your concern. We don't really know much about OPC scripts at this point, but the limits of them will definitely have a major impact on the game. I do think working with other players in CoE will require a significant amount of planning and coordination. If we can direct our OPC's to follow another player, or follow their instructions, or listen to orders from these specified characters, that will solve some issues. Your friend could then follow you to your destination, and the mercenary leader could choose to take OPC's along on their mission.

Depending on the limits of OPC's, we will need to schedule, coordinate, and plan in advance. You and your friend might need to schedule your next play session or risk one of you spending some amount of time practicing your skills, improving your camp, etc while waiting. The mercenary may have to schedule well in advance or only accept missions at specific times in the week.

I think that story events will actually be the easiest to handle. If it's not something an OPC can do the engine will likely either guide you to someone else who can progress the story, or after enough time your story event will evolve into an event about this character not fulfilling their responsibilities. You might take them to court for breach of contract, give them a negative shift to their reputation, decide to employ deviant skills, try to initiate a cassus belli, etc.

Posted By Ironside at 09:00 AM - Thu Jun 22 2017

Your concerns then will need to be held off until the OPC details are revealed. No one has specifics. Not even the devs are this point imho. White board? yes. Final product, not even close.

Something Caspian has stated several times is it is the expectation that players will log off in towns (safe zones) due to the potential of attack outside these zones.

It's ok to ask the question but probably best to not overthink things until the information is available to all.

Posted By Ironside at 4:00 PM - Wed Jun 21 2017

Your concerns then will need to be held off until the OPC details are revealed. No one has specifics. Not even the devs are this point imho. White board? yes. Final product, not even close.

That sounds reasonable. Guess I'll just have to keep an eye out for a later dev journal on OPC once they iron it out more.

Posted By CommonlyQuixotic at 4:00 PM - Wed Jun 21 2017

>or after enough time your story event will evolve into an event about this character not fulfilling their responsibilities. You might take them to court for breach of contract, give them a negative shift to their reputation, decide to employ deviant skills, try to initiate a cassus belli, etc.

This was part of my concern as well. Real life obviously takes precedence over an MMO so there will be times you're offline for family, work, emergencies, etc. It would be a shame to have some drastic punishment in game because of that.

At first the appeal of Chronicles of Elyria was how much of a living world it would be. But being that we live in an actual living world ourselves we can't be in CoE all the time. With so many political, economic, and social positions players will hold in game I just hope the storytelling works out as planned.

Sorry if this post sounds like I'm paranoid or complaining about a non-existent problem, which I guess it is since the game's not out yet.

Posted By Cetha at 7:13 PM - Wed Jun 21 2017

This was part of my concern as well. Real life obviously takes precedence over an MMO so there will be times you're offline for family, work, emergencies, etc. It would be a shame to have some drastic punishment in game because of that.

At first the appeal of Chronicles of Elyria was how much of a living world it would be. But being that we live in an actual living world ourselves we can't be in CoE all the time. With so many political, economic, and social positions players will hold in game I just hope the storytelling works out as planned.

Sorry if this post sounds like I'm paranoid or complaining about a non-existent problem, which I guess it is since the game's not out yet.

I agree that it will be important that OPC scripts are handled well. We just know so little about them at this point that it is hard to even speculate about what they will or wont be capable of.

I also agree that real life takes precedence over games. But one of the features that drew me to CoE is that your choices and actions will have consequences. I think it will largely be up to the player to choose their commitments and responsibilities. And that means some players will fail in-game because they overestimated what they could handle or something happened in real life that caused CoE to drop down their list of priorities. This is a natural result of our actions having consequences, and our being able to shape the world in real time. We already know that players in positions of power will be expected to spend a certain number of hours each week managing their responsibilities. We already know that even commoners can face significant consequences if they don't log in every 28 days. The devs are trying to keep responsibilities and consequences manageable, but they also recognize that for this game to work as planned a certain amount of player investment is necessary.